Pirates of the Thunder (13 page)

Raven stared at him. “You a scientist?”

“Naw, I’m like you. I pick up stuff. You never know when something’s gonna come up useful.”

Raven stared at him. In occupation—and somewhat in personality—he and Nagy were twins, yet the Crow was far cruder in his approach, and Nagy far more intellectual. Raven suspected that in the jungle or in the bush, Nagy would be dead meat, but that in any sort of civilization Nagy might be even more dangerous than Clayben.

“Nagy—I know why I’m here, but why are you?”

“Maybe we ought to trade information,” the tall, thin man replied. “Fact is, I was about to ask you the same question. For me it’s simple-survival. We went to the same training schools. Survival is the first priority of an effective operative. I blew Melchior—thanks to you. The administrators don’t like that. The escape brought Master System down on us, as I knew it had to, which is why I personally directed the chase. I didn’t want to be there when the Vals crashed in the locks. The board, now, it can lay all the illegal stuff on Clayben and me. I was in a meat grinder. The way to get out is to run out—and the stars were the only place to run. So when Clayben pulled up in that souped-up custom interstellar job and took me off the
Star,
I was only too willing. Now, that’s simple enough. It’s
you
I don’t get. What was it? The lure of power? Those rings can get anybody sick with the god disease.”

“No,” Raven said quietly. “I didn’t fail and I didn’t turn traitor and I didn’t run out. I’m just doing my job.”

“Huh? Blowing Melchior? Springing this crazy assortment? Lugging everybody here? Stirring up Master System to what must be the closest thing to a frenzy a machine can experience? Who the hell can you be working for that would want
that!
Or deserved the kind of price we’re all paying?”

“You want the truth?”

“Shoot. What difference can it make now?”

“I don’t know. Chen—the one chief administrator on Earth with a ring of his own—I think
he
knows. But as high as he is, he’s just an employee, too, and in many ways he’s in a more dangerous spot than I am. It was understood that I wouldn’t know anything beyond Chen because, if I was captured, that was as far as even Master System could go. You can’t tell what you don’t know, and I suspect that Chen has a way out just as Clayben did if the heat gets too great.”

Nagy stared at him and frowned. “But there
is
nobody higher than the administrators. They get their orders direct from Master System. It would have to be a hell of a computer brain to be in that chain somewhere, and it’d have to be an independent one, not one Master System could control or reprogram. There must be more computer brains than people but it just ain’t possible.”

“It’s possible. I don’t know how. Even if the survival and discovery of the rings information was in fact accidental, very little that went on after it was. I’m not even a hundred-percent certain that the accident that caused the courier from Warlock to Chen to crash in Hawks’s backyard while he was on leave—very conveniently—was accidental. Put that together with the near-simultaneous discovery by the Chinese of a tech cult with complete plans for a
Thunder-class
ship and how to operate and interface with it and you have real questions about coincidence. Maybe it is. Maybe after nine hundred years everything just came together. I don’t believe it, though. Maybe in nine hundred million years, but I’m not a real strong believer in this much fate. Me, I’m an add-on. Warlock needed me to track down Hawks in unfamiliar territory, and once I was in, I was
in.
So then this Song Ching, who just
happens
to be the district administrator’s daughter and knows all the security codes and overrides, gets initial access to all the starship plans and information—hell, she was
there
on the raid, and since when is a relative that high up allowed that close to action?—gets all the time she needs to crack the ship interfaces and then gets a ton of pressure on her to get her to escape.”

“Go on. I’m beginning to see how you think.”

“So our China girl escapes and just h
appens
to get on an interplanetary freighter that’s just been refitted and whose core has just been modified and reprogrammed for independent action. Now, you and I know how easy that is in space, but who could do it on
Earth,
under the very nose of and monitored by Master System? Somebody did. That pig Sabatini took his liberties, but she wound up on Melchior. Thanks to Chen, so did Hawks and both Warlock and me —but none of his own people. And I’m there with a detailed list of just who to spring, and how, and on what ship. Not only that, but I have three out of four locations for the missing rings. How the hell could Chen get
them!”

Nagy thought about it. “Maybe a freebooter commission. Big reward for the location of any rings.”

“We’ll check, but would he chance it? Would
you?
They’d wonder why he wanted the rings and then they’d start after them, and before you knew it they’d be holding up both him and Master System just like we hope to do. Uh uh. When I was at Chen’s, he didn’t know where the other rings were—I’d stake my life on it. Then, when I got the message in his code on Melchior, there they were. I don’t think he sent the code or the whole list to be sprung. I think somebody else did.”

“Yeah, but why Hawks? I mean, even you said you thought the crash was accidental.”

“Maybe. Maybe not. Chen seemed to think that Hawks was the key to the whole business. He’s no real fighter, although brave enough. He’s an intellectual. A historian. A man specializing in the last century of pre-Master civilization. He didn’t know about the rings, but he knows a hell of a lot of history of that period. My orders, even direct from Chen, were to protect him at all costs. Nobody’s that important by accident—not when you add up all the other coincidences. No, I’m on the job, just following orders. I don’t know who, but I figure I’ll find that out when we got the hard part done—if we can. Hawks is right about one thing—Master System is crippled when it comes to preventing us from getting the rings. Crippled, but not helpless. The odds are still pretty well against us.”

Nagy scratched his ample chin and thought. “Well, two possibilities come to mind. I’m beginning to agree that coincidence has been stretched to the breaking point here, so that leaves the ‘who’ of it. One thought is that we’re being thrown out here by Master System itself as some kind of final test of its security.”

“I thought of that, but it doesn’t wash. The rings are the only thing that can do it in. There’s no way a logical beast like that could afford to let that kind of information out just for a test, particularly out of the Solar System. Once out, it could never get back—and sooner or later somebody would follow up on it and succeed. It’s only chance was to shut this information down fast before it got out. No, by any logical standard, it just doesn’t make sense. If nothing else, the mere news that something exists that can hurt or even kill Master System would be enough to spur people on. It knows that. It knows us all too well.”

Nagy nodded. ‘That brings me to the second thought I’ve had. You know Master System has been claiming for some time that there’s a war on. That it’s fighting even, holding its own, but no better. Nobody knows who it’s warring with, but that’s one hell of an enemy if it can fight Master System to a standstill. Maybe—just maybe—that’s what this is all about. If you were out there, stalemated against our system, you’d find some way to get information, contacts, whatever. You’d learn. And if you stumbled on the fact that somewhere out here is a weapon that can blow Master System’s brain out, you’d try for it.”

The idea hadn’t occurred to Raven and it fascinated him. “But—if that’s true, then why us? Why not go after them yourself?”

Nagy shrugged. “As to why it’s us, I couldn’t guess. I can’t figure Master System, so why should I be able to figure out somebody or something really alien? As to why get somebody else to go for them, there might be a real basic and simple answer. You said it yourself—in the core of Master System there is an imperative. We, as human beings, have a
right
to try for the rings. We have that edge, for whatever it’s worth, and it might be very slim but it is an edge. An edge that wouldn’t apply to nonhumans, by which I mean people not descended from Earth stock. Maybe they calculated everything and figured humans had the edge.”

“Then that means that if we ever get them, we’ll have more than just Master System and Chen and the rest of the power lovers to cope with. Nagy, suppose they don’t come for them when and if we have them? Suppose they just ease the way so we get in and shut Master System down?”

Nagy smiled grimly. “Then they win, don’t they?” He sighed. “Why don’t we cross that bridge if we ever come to it? Damn it, we aren’t even set up yet.” He looked out across the crimson sea. “A few other islands over there. Sooner or later we’re gonna need a boat to tour the neighborhood.” He looked around the beach. “It’s somewhat sheltered here—you can see how the big waves break well out there, so there’s underwater lava or a reef or something here. I’d say we build right here—back there and against the jungle. Burn out a good-sized trail and keep it open—the jungle will try to take it back all the time.” He looked over at the tallest peak. “Somebody’s gonna have to get up there sooner or later, too. Establish a high refuge if we get any real nasty storms.” He sighed, his mind racing at top speed. “If these are anything like Earth volcanoes, they make great topsoil. Bum away selected areas of jungle to get fields protected from the worst weather, and you could probably grow most anything here. I—”

There was a sudden loud splash behind him and he whirled, pistol out of his holster with amazing speed, his body automatically taking a defensive crouch. Raven’s reaction was a bit slower, but in the same style. The Crow frowned, seeing nothing. “Something falling in? Or something leaping?”

“I don’t know. They said the initial survey showed some large life forms in the water. Lots of them, in big groups, all over the place. Maybe that was just one of them. We’ll have to find out what the hell’s there before my boat can sail.”

Raven reached in his pack and took out a pair of simple binoculars, part of the kit that he always carried. He holstered his weapon and looked through the lenses, surveying the surface of the water.

“Black shapes in the water. Fairly good size,” he told Nagy. “I can’t see very much of them and none of ‘em are long enough to get much more than a blurry shape, but there’s sure some big suckers out there. I don’t know. They kinda look like the big otters we got along the Missouri and Mississippi, only even bigger.” He lifted the binoculars so he was looking only at the surface. The closest island, about four kilometers distant, was now also in his sights. Something suddenly nagged at him, and he took his eye off the water and looked squarely at the island itself. “Nagy—I think you might want to take a look at this. I think we better call it in, too.”

“Huh? What?” Nagy, too, had holstered his weapon and now he took the binoculars.

“That next island. To the right, there, maybe a couple of degrees, where the beach looks thin. Right above it.”

Arnold Nagy stared. Then, after a moment, he saw what the Crow was talking about, and he felt a chill.

“That line of trees is in perfect rows,” he muttered. “After centuries even if they were planted that way they wouldn’t still be there. They’re planted, all right, and maintained, but not by Master System.”

“Freebooters?” Raven wondered.

He sighed. “Maybe, but I doubt it. Not their kind of layout. No ships, no fast getaway. Shipwreck, maybe, but that would be stretching coincidence beyond any reasonable bounds. Thousands of islands. Uh uh. Best bet is that the freebooters have a real good reason for steering clear of here. Best bet is there’s places like that all over this planet. I think this was a much more advanced prototype than we figured.”

“You mean—it’s inhabited?”

“Looks like. I wonder by whom?”

“Or what?” Raven replied.

They reported to the ship.

“I’m not sure I like the look of this,” Hawks commented. “Perhaps—perhaps we ought to rethink this idea of a planetary camp for now. There is enough room here.”

“No,” Star Eagle objected. “There is no such thing as the perfect world for you except the one of your birth. This ship is not fit for long-term habitation by a growing population, and while I intend extensive modifications, these might take a great deal of time and would necessitate everyone being off the ship. It is also not good for the child to come. While near-weightlessness is fine when the child is in the womb, it should not be born in this environment and not know gravity from the start.”

Hawks began to wonder if Star Eagle wasn’t more concerned about China than about their own needs, but he also knew he couldn’t press the issue. In a very real sense the pilot was a free agent, and because he alone controlled access to the vast data banks and the interstellar drives, he had a vote that weighed far heavier than theirs. Hawks had to wonder, though, about the relationship between the small pregnant girl who might give birth in days or weeks and this machine intelligence with whom she mentally mated. Did—could—Star Eagle feel as humans felt? And, in this case, was he being protective—or running scared by forcing her away? There was no way to tell.

Hawks sighed. “Very well, but the initial camp must be well inland, near the transmitter. Whatever is down there is mostly of the sea, and it would be unwise to be too close to their domain. Can some sort of security perimeter be established around the camp? We are too few to have constant guards and would be easily overwhelmed.”

“It is possible. I believe Maintenance can manufacture something that will do, but everyone should go armed at all times. If these are humans in any sense of the word, contact must be established and a treaty made, if at all possible.”

“If they are humans, they might not be inclined to talk treaty first,” Hawks responded. “We will not know their tribal ways until we press, or until they come to us. If they are too territorial, it might mean a fight.”